While not bad for TV, the final twist reveals this not to be a werewolf film after all (though the medium had dabbled in the subgenre with MOON OF THE WOLF {1972} and even an episode from the KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER TV series, actually emanating from the same stable and year as this) but Richard Matheson's script - foregoing the generics (the attacks usually involving both an anonymous victim and an unseen assailant, every time the Police converge en masse and to the same pounding score upon the scene of the crime) - is both thoughtful and gripping. The narrative only really supplies a couple of human suspects but, even if the identity of the villain is pretty obvious, it is the reason for his actions that compels attention (ironically, that is what he had intended himself - to rouse the citizens from their placid existence through terror!). Incidentally, I have often remarked about how these kind of urban locations are simply too exposed to make for safe and comfortable living: the curtains are invariably never drawn and houses are shown as being extremely easy to break into!
The cast is headed by Peter Graves (displaying much of the characteristics that made his name in the long-running MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE TV series - being both brawny, a former hunter, and brainy, a writer) and Clint Walker (in what must be one of the best roles he ever had as his ex-buddy who still lives only for the chase, claiming that a prey and its predator are never more alive than at the moment immediately prior to the kill!). Also on hand are Don Megowan (from TV's TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN {1958} and CREATION OF THE HUMANOIS {1962}) as a man who had so impressed Walker, by giving him a hard time at arm-wrestling, that he is hired as his personal manservant(!) and bartender Jo Ann Pflug as Graves' romantic interest (who instantly distrusts Walker and is eventually almost killed herself by the 'monster'). For what it is worth, the way in which Walker taunts Graves to leave Pflug and rejoin him gives this an unintended gay subtext! Needless to say, Graves eventually regains his old form (after having been humiliated by a dismally short bout of mano a mano!) and overcomes the conditioned wolf Walker used in the attacks, after which he is provoked into shooting the man himself in the back.
The cast is headed by Peter Graves (displaying much of the characteristics that made his name in the long-running MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE TV series - being both brawny, a former hunter, and brainy, a writer) and Clint Walker (in what must be one of the best roles he ever had as his ex-buddy who still lives only for the chase, claiming that a prey and its predator are never more alive than at the moment immediately prior to the kill!). Also on hand are Don Megowan (from TV's TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN {1958} and CREATION OF THE HUMANOIS {1962}) as a man who had so impressed Walker, by giving him a hard time at arm-wrestling, that he is hired as his personal manservant(!) and bartender Jo Ann Pflug as Graves' romantic interest (who instantly distrusts Walker and is eventually almost killed herself by the 'monster'). For what it is worth, the way in which Walker taunts Graves to leave Pflug and rejoin him gives this an unintended gay subtext! Needless to say, Graves eventually regains his old form (after having been humiliated by a dismally short bout of mano a mano!) and overcomes the conditioned wolf Walker used in the attacks, after which he is provoked into shooting the man himself in the back.